The Relation Between the Internet Addiction and Sleep Disturbance Among Ondokuz Mayıs University Students

Tevfik Fikret Karahan, Bektas Murat Yalcin, Esra Yalcin

Keywords: Internet, Addiction, University Students, Sleep

Aim:

Problematic internet usage is becoming a greater problem among adolescents not only in our country also in the world as well. problematic Internet use causes progressive deterioration in work, school, social and family functioning. Adolescents who spend more time using the Internet are reported to have less sleeping time and feel higher levels of tiredness. However, there are limited data about this phenomenon among university students in Turkey.

Method:

Among 1458 volunteered students of Ondokuz Mayıs University in different faculties 1256 of the who meet the study criteria are included in to the study. Every participant received a demographic survey, extent of internet use, Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and relevant questions investigating about sleep quality (daily sleep duration, difficulty in falling asleep, night awaking etc.). The participants were dived into three groups according to their internet usage (Average, problematic and addictive) The results were analyzed by SPSS 16.0 version.

Results:

Among 1256 investigated participants (53 %) 664 were women. 4,2% of the study sample had addictive and 8,5% of them had problematic internet usage. The IAT scores were 85,6±9,8 in addictive, 55,9±6,1 in problematic and 22,9±6,7 in average internet users (p<0,001). The mean weekly internet usage in significantly higher in addictive (21,54±10,3) and in problematic (12,2±5,1) students compared to average users (3,5±2,9) (F=12,457, p<0,001). Daily sleep duration is lower in addictive users (6,9±1,5) compared to other groups (p<0,001). Also difficulty in falling sleep (62,8) night awaking (48,2%) and early morning awaking (23,15) is more frequent in addictive group (p<0,001 respectively)

Conclusions:

A correlation between addictive internet usage and sleep disturbances is observed in our study population.

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